Gender Expression Throughout My Life

I have always been a tomboy for as long as I can remember. When I was very young, I was way more interested in playing outside in the dirt than playing with dolls like the other girls did. My aunt is a babysitter so my brother and I went to her house growing up. When I was there I met one of my best friends who is a year younger than me. We are still close to this day but we were very different when we were younger. She has always been very girly and loved makeup and dressing up, but I was never into that. She used to get mad at me as kids because I never wanted to play with her, and instead, would play with my brother and the other boys my aunt watched. One time she even tried to cut my hair because she thought my hair needed to be shorter if I was going to act like a boy. I hated wearing dresses when I was little and up until, about 5th grade, I never wore my hair in any other style than a ponytail. I liked to wear basketball shorts and sporty sunglasses and was not really like my friends. When I was in 6th grade I went through a phase where I cut my hair fairly short and always wore a hat, whether that be a baseball cap or a stocking cap. My cousins used to make fun of me so I stopped doing it and went back to being a little more girly. I am the youngest girl on both sides of my family and surrounded by a crap ton of male cousins that are my age, so I always played with them and hung out with them way more than I did with my older girl cousins. Even to this day, at every family gathering we sit in my grandma's living room and watching either a football game or basketball game rather than gossiping with the girls. I've just grown up around more boys and adopted their mannerisms. Nowadays, I like to dress up and wear makeup and want to look cute, so I have almost done a 180 from when I was little.